The Durham Deception

by Philip Gooden

  The same reporters had already called at Julia Howlett’s house wanting to speak with Helen and get her side of the story, the sensational account of her suffering and near-death at the hands of the ‘Demon Doctor’, as he had been christened in the headlines. The first reporter wormed his way into Colt House on false pretences and when Tom found out who he was he wanted to punch him in the face. It was fortunate that Aunt Julia was on hand to restrain Tom and turn the reporter out, saying firmly that Mrs Ansell required rest after her dreadful ordeal, and giving orders that no one else except the police was to be admitted under any circumstances.

  This did not stop the press speculating or publishing quite unfounded stories. The death of the Seldons in Norwood was laid firmly at the doctor’s door, as was the murder of Eustace Flask in Durham, as well as various unsolved crimes in other cities which had no connection to him. The London journalists hared round to see Miss Ethel Smight – ‘the well-known phrenologist’ – in Tullis Street but they found her and her pinched-faced maid gone. The house was rented and Miss Smight had speedily decamped once her brother was arrested. Either she feared more attention from the police, who had threatened to charge her with being Doctor Tony’s accomplice, or she wanted to avoid the intrusions of the press. Nevertheless the pressmen talked to a client who had had his scalp felt by her and who claimed to have experienced ‘strange and sinister emanations’ coming from Miss Smight’s fingertips, but beyond that they discovered little.

  Letters and telegrams were flying to and fro between Colt House and Helen’s mother in Highbury. Mrs Scott had read, with mounting horror, the earliest accounts in the papers and had only been prevented from getting the first train north by Aunt Julia’s assurances that her daughter was coping well and needed fewer, not more, visitors.

  In the event, the fatal shooting of Frank Harcourt was the only charge brought against Smight and it was this which dominated the proceedings. Smight’s twisted programme of revenge against those whom he believed to be responsible for his brother’s suicide was scarcely referred to. He was painted by the prosecuting counsel and by the press as a clever man whose mind had been turned by vindictiveness and whose moral sense had been sapped by his opium addiction. ‘For it has been well established by the leading authorities,’ said the prosecution, ‘that prolonged indulgence in opiates can lead to a monomaniacal state of mind in which the subject feels compelled to satisfy his desires, however bizarre, vicious or degenerate.’

  Smight’s counsel tried to show that his client was not fit to plead because his sanity was in doubt, but the lawyer’s heart did not seem to be in the attempt. Nor was he helped by Smight’s demeanour in the dock. The doctor said almost nothing and seemed impassive, even indifferent to his fate. The public and the reporters scrutinized him for traces of remorse or moral degeneracy and, although they failed to find any sign of penitence, everyone agreed that he looked evil.

  So when the guilty verdict and the sentence arrived they were regarded as a formality. But a very satisfying formality.

  Meanwhile Helen was indeed coping well, remarkably well, with the aftermath of her experiences and it was she who sometimes had to soothe Tom, who was full of anger at Anthony Smight as well as blaming himself for having let Helen slip away from him.

  Once he had discovered that Helen was not at the Assembly Rooms with Major Marmont, he had been plunged into a near panic. Sebastian Marmont had been nearly as concerned and once they established that Helen must have been tricked by a counterfeit letter, they asked each other where she had gone. Where had she been enticed to? Marmont mentioned the Palace of Varieties behind the Court Inn. It was where some of his magical equipment was stored. He was renting the place while he was performing in Durham and using it as a convenient space to refine his tricks. Anyone who was familiar with his movements might be aware of that.

  He’d scarcely finished explaining this when Tom demanded that Marmont take him there, this instant. By now almost two hours had passed since he had last seen Helen. Marmont instructed his three sons to remain where they were but Dilip Gopal accompanied them as they ran through the streets of Durham and over the Elvet Bridge. A carriage pulled up by them on the bridge and Tom was relieved to see Harcourt and Traynor in the back.

  Rapidly, all was made clear. The two policemen had arrived at the central station in Newcastle to be met by an officer of the city force, and informed that they were on a futile errand. The men apprehended in a swoop on a dubious area of the docks did not include Smight after all. The one thought to be the doctor had been identified – definitely identified – as a ne’er-do-well called Evans. It was unfortunate that the officer who arrested Evans was new to the force and had jumped to conclusions based on a slight physical similarity to Anthony Smight before he fired off the telegram to Durham.

  When he heard the facts Traynor was immediately fearful of what might be happening back in the city and, remembering the assurances which he had given to Mr and Mrs Ansell, insisted they take the next train to Durham. Now he and Harcourt were returning to the police-house close by.

  Tom breathlessly said that he very much feared that his wife had fallen into the hands of Anthony Smight. Major Marmont explained about the fake letter and his belief that Mrs Ansell and the murderous doctor might be together in the Palace of Varieties.

  A force of half a dozen constables was speedily assembled and the bare circumstances outlined to them by Harcourt. They made an approach on foot to the variety hall. Tom was for running ahead and bursting into the place, but Inspector Traynor told him that this might cause the very thing they were desperate to avoid, a panicked or vindictive reaction by Smight. Sebastian Marmont held a set of keys to the theatre. He unlocked the double doors of the main entrance and a handful of men slipped into the lobby, where they were told to keep an absolute silence and not to enter the main auditorium until called for. Marmont himself, together with Dilip Gopal, Harcourt, Traynor, Tom and a couple more of the constables, crept down the alley that ran beside the wooden building. The side door, the performers’ entrance, was unlocked.

  The Superintendent and the Inspector went first down a short gaslit passage until they came to the flight of steps leading to the backstage area. The group paused, hardly daring to breathe. All of them could hear the sound of a man’s voice. The words were indistinguishable but the low monotone carried from the stage. ‘It’s Smight,’ mouthed Harcourt.

  Tom pushed forward. His heart was beating hard and his mouth was dry. He felt a surge of hope. If Smight was there and if he was talking that could only mean that Helen was listening to him and that she was not . . . He didn’t finish the thought.

  William Traynor tapped his chest to indicate he would lead the way. The party crept up the stairs and clustered in the cramped area at the top. They were surrounded by boxes and scenery flats and hanging drapes. A subdued light filtered from the stage, together with the droning tones. Tom thought he recognized the voice as that of the man who had accosted them on the riverbank several days earlier, trying to hand Helen her dropped handkerchief.

  Then there was the most extraordinary sound, the sound of cheerful laughter. And Tom knew it was Helen. The laughter was followed by footsteps crossing the stage and then an odd metallic grinding. Tom could not be held back any longer and he pushed at the heavy curtains which formed the wings of the theatre. At his heels were the others.

  Tom saw Helen tied down to a kind of platform which appeared to be floating unsupported several feet above the floor. On the far side of the stage, next to a piece of apparatus equipped with gears and handles was Anthony Smight. He had been bending over the machine but at the sound of stamping feet he straightened up. Tom darted towards Helen, only to hear a shout of ‘Don’t, Mr Ansell!’

  With a thrill of horror, Tom realized that not only was Helen secured by her arms and feet but that there was a thin wire pressing into her neck. Her eyes were tight shut and her face was suffused with red. If the platform shifted upwards by only an inch m
ore she would be throttled. He seized the platform to try and push it down but it remained firmly fixed in space, held by dozens of fine wires. Off to the side he was aware of shouts and curses and the thud of police boots. There was a flash and a violent bang which left him deafened.

  A body was lying in the wings next to the winding apparatus and he hoped it was Smight but, no, the doctor was still standing, waving a revolver in the air. Smight took aim at another figure, possibly Sebastian Marmont, but simultaneously with his straightening his arm to loose off a second shot, half a dozen individuals smothered him and brought him to the ground. The gun flew up in the air.

  Tom stood by, still trying to push the floating platform down. Then he attempted to loosen the wire about Helen’s neck but it was secured to a block underneath and he was terrified of increasing the pressure. He spoke to her, said her name, but did not know whether she heard. He grasped her hand and she opened her eyes, saw him and smiled. Then she closed her eyes again and seemed to lose consciousness.

  Major Marmont took control of the winding mechanism and lowered the levitating platform so that the wire about Helen’s neck slackened. Others freed her from the bonds about her hands and feet. Anthony Smight stood to one side, his hands already cuffed behind his back and with two of the constables gripping him tightly by either shoulder.

  William Traynor went up to Smight. By now Tom’s ears had stopped ringing. He heard the detective say to the doctor in a low but emphatic voice, ‘You’ll swing for this.’

  At some point later Tom asked Helen if she remembered laughing out loud. At first she didn’t wish to dwell on her captivity at the hands of Doctor Smight but, by degrees, Tom heard most of the story; Smight’s explanation for his motives and actions, his desire to hurt Tom by taking her first. The crazily elaborate plan for murdering Helen.

  ‘I wondered why he did not use the gun,’ she said. ‘He must have had it in his pocket and when you and the police burst in, he was quick enough to shoot poor Superintendent Harcourt. But I believe that he wanted me to suffer a little of what his brother Ernest had suffered as he drowned in the Thames. To be deprived of air, to be gasping for life. Like the Seldons, only with them he employed gas.’

  Tom could say nothing. In his mind’s eye, he saw Helen strapped to the levitation platform, the thin wire fastened tight about her white neck. The mark of that wire took more than two weeks to fade. Helen wore high-collared dresses to hide it. Tom turned cold at the memory as he did a dozen times a day. But now Helen was cheerful and wanted to talk.

  ‘I saw myself as Smight must have seen me, a woman, a young woman tied to a platform on stage, for whom a tortuous death had been conceived. I was in a theatre, Tom! Even though there was no audience to see us. But it was like a scene from a melodrama where the villain has his hands on the heroine and is about to despatch her in a very lurid manner. If you are watching you may be thrilled but you also know that it is not real, it is almost absurd. You have faith too that at the last moment, the very last moment, rescue will come. The hero will burst through the window or break down the door of the cellar. He will strike out at the villain with a manly blow from his fist. He will sweep the heroine into his arms. If I was laughing it was because it was like such a scene.’

  ‘But you did not know that rescue would come.’

  ‘I did not know but I hoped.’

  Execution

  Tom and Helen Ansell had left Durham by the time sentence was carried out on Doctor Anthony Smight. The execution was fixed for three weeks after the end of the trial. There was no attempt at an appeal, no petition for clemency. Few new facts had been discovered about Smight and the story of the Demon Doctor faded from the front pages. The Durham superintendent who had been assigned by Chief Constable Huggins with the investigation of the murder of Eustace Flask, following Harcourt’s own death, quietly closed the file since it was obvious that the doctor had killed the medium. No one greatly regretted Flask’s demise apart, perhaps, from Julia Howlett – and she had been so absorbed in her niece’s fate that she had little time to spare for ‘poor Eustace’.

  Smight had been an exemplary prisoner, in that he caused no trouble and made no requests. One day the governor of the gaol brought him a letter. It was an ill-written missive from George Forester, the man who had spied on the houses belonging to the Seldons and the Ansells in London. Forester, as Inspector Traynor had explained, could not square his conscience with his suspicions about the Seldons’ deaths and so had informed on Smight. Naturally Forester said nothing of this in the letter but he expressed his regret that the good Doctor Tony was in gaol (‘goal’ as he wrote it) and his hope that he would find comfort (‘cumfert’) in the Lord. Oh, and Annie and the kids, specially (‘spesherly’) Mike, sent their loves.

  Smight glanced at the letter, then screwed it up and tossed it into a corner of the cell. He was sent no other communication apart from two proposals of marriage which he never read because the governor intercepted and destroyed them. If his sister Ethel knew of his fate, she did not get in touch. He had no visitors other than, early on, his counsel wanting to discuss an appeal. Smight rejected the proposal.

  If Smight was an exemplary prisoner he wasn’t a popular one, in the way that some condemned men and women became popular by striking up a weird sort of friendship with the warders. Those assigned to guard Smight reminisced fondly about the recent occupants of the condemned quarter of the gaol, honest men brought down by drink or temper, everyday individuals who’d tumbled into murder by accident. They even had a good word for Mary Ann Cotton, who had been executed the previous year after an extensive poisoning spree. Mary was a dangerous bird all right, but she’d crack a joke with her keepers and pass the time of day with them, unlike the yellow-faced sour-guts presently sitting in the condemned cell. They said he was lucky. A few years earlier and the doctor would have been topped outside the gaol – or outside the new courthouse more precisely – for all the world to see. There’d have been a good turnout for a public turning-off, one to rival old Mary Cotton’s.

  Did Anthony Smight care about any of this? He did not appear to. He read poetry! He took his twice-daily exercise in the condemned yard which, with its high walls giving a view of nothing but sky and neighbouring chimney stacks, was like a prison within a prison. If he was pining for an opium-pipe, he did not indicate it by a single gesture or word. In fact, he continued to say almost nothing.

  On the afternoon before the day of Smight’s execution, the hangman William Marcraft arrived from London. He booked into one of the city’s cheaper hotels and reported to the prison shortly before four o’clock, the hour stipulated in his memorandum of conditions. There he examined the scaffold and the pit in the yard, even though he was already familiar with these items. He tested the lever and trapdoors, he peered into the brick-lined pit below. He obtained details of the condemned man’s weight and height from the prison doctor and snatched a look at Anthony Smight through a peephole in the cell door. He saw an individual stretched out on his bed, hands behind his head. He could not tell whether Smight was asleep.

  Marcraft then returned to his inexpensive hotel and made a few calculations in a black-bound notebook which he kept for this purpose. He compared Smight’s physical details with those of a couple of other individuals listed in the book. Marcraft went downstairs and had a supper of steak-and-kidney pie in the hotel dining room. He drank half a pint of porter. He was a naturally abstemious man whether in his regular trade as a barber or his occasional work as a hangman. The landlord knew the reason for Marcraft’s presence in Durham as, most likely, did all of the staff, but no one said a word about it to the hangman’s face. Nor did he mention it, again a condition that was laid down in his memorandum.

  While William Marcraft was eating his pie, Anthony Smight was taking his last supper. He turned in at ten o’clock and, to those who inspected him throughout the night, he appeared to sleep soundly. So soundly that he had to be roused the next morning when the chaplain slipped int
o the cell, together with two warders. Smight had already rejected the chaplain’s overtures on earlier visits and he proceeded to ignore the man as he tried a mixture of prayer, consolation and conversation while the doctor ate his breakfast. Smight did not eat much but he chewed and swallowed composedly.

  Shortly before eight William Marcraft entered the cell, with the governor and another pair of warders. The hangman shook Smight’s hand, a gesture that wasn’t entirely courteous since it enabled him to half immobilize the condemned man as well as to gauge his nervousness by feeling him, palm to palm. But Anthony Smight’s hand was dry as dust and he offered no struggle as his arms and hands were pinioned by two of the warders.

  Then, with the neatness of a long-practised military drill, Smight was half-marched, half-escorted out of the cell and into the yard. It was already a fine morning, just past midsummer though no sun had yet reached the yard. Smight was placed between the posts of the scaffold and over the trapdoors which opened into the pit. He was permitted one final glimpse around, at the high walls, at the half dozen warders, the doleful-looking chaplain, the brisk-faced governor, the prison doctor, and William Marcraft himself.

  Then the hangman drew the hood of coarse cloth over the doctor’s face and adjusted the rope about his neck. Smight was left standing alone. There was the grating sound of a lever and the abrupt swing of the trapdoors. Smight dropped soundlessly. The rope jerked to a halt after what seemed an eternity but was scarcely a second. It quivered. What happened next was the real test of the hangman’s skill. It might take minutes, even a whole quarter of an hour, for a man to die if the executioner had botched his job, signified by the continued shivering of the rope. But Marcraft was as careful in his preparations as he was restrained in his drinking habits. The rope trembled for a few instants only, and then fell still.